How nice it is not to choose. To have someone take you by the hand and show you, just for once, the way. How comfortable to sit in a restaurant and that your companion chooses, with the certainty of someone who knows the food (and not with the carinclonería of a gallant gesture), the food, sure that you will like it.
This is what happens in Jara, a Japanese restaurant where there is an à la carte menu, but you are invited to let yourself be carried away by the two menus based on a concept that is growing in Barcelona: the omakase, the Japanese idea according to which you leave the choice of food in the hands of the chef so that he thinks and elaborates on the spot what you are going to eat.
At Jara they take omakase to the extreme, with a restaurant arranged around a bar that is a dance hall for a sushiman who handles the knives thinking, minute by minute, what he will serve you next.
Why the best sushi in Barcelona is made by two Chileans who started a delivery.
This is not your average Japanese restaurant. Nor is it an imposture fusion or a textbook exercise in exoticism. There is Japanese cuisine, yes, but passed through the filter of two Chilean brothers, the Jara, Catalans by adoption, obsessed with the trade, the product and the absolute respect for the classic codes: Jonathan in the kitchen, Robby in the dining room. Thirty-somethings, yes, but with a training and discipline that many veterans would sign.
The former was trained in London, home to some of the best Asian restaurants in the world (Dabiz Muñoz of Diverxo, for example, also trained there). The second was chief operating officer of Pantea, one of the city’s major restaurant groups.
From this mix comes Jara, a sober and subdued London-style restaurant, where everything revolves not only around the timer of an operational manager and where everything revolves not only around the food, but also around the experience of a passionate sushiman. In the center, Jonathan handling the prime fish that comes to him from various Spanish fish markets and also from Japan. Around the bar that surrounds the chef’s ring, Robby, who offers the wines and the extensive menu of sakes.
From delivery to omakase
Pandemic did its job well here. First there was Jara delivery, a premium sushi restaurant with four chairs that were always occupied and reviews that left no room for doubt. Then came the natural leap: an intimate, elegant place without rigidity, where a la carte by day and omakase by night coexist. Or rather, where omakase rules, which in Japanese means “I leave it in your hands”. And here, letting yourself go is almost a moral obligation.
Sitting at one of the fourteen seats at the bar, or at a table, if you prefer distance, the menu is built live . They show you the fish, explain its origin, and tell you why today they are serving this and not that. The rice, fundamental, comes from Pals; the tonyina is Arrom; the wasabi, from Montseny; the whisky, a 12-year-old Yamazaki that appears when it has to appear. Everything makes sense. Nothing is superfluous.
And although nigiris are their specialty, we liked more the first ones, a sample of the delicate fusion they practice at Jara: the tataki with wafu sauce, the sashimi with ponzu and chili or the spicy tuna futomaki.
In any case, watch out for their product: the sashimi tasting, which allows you to taste the nuances that a tuna loin can have in its different heights is, in itself, the experience. Along the way,Robby will be approaching the selection of sakes and wines that make up a menu advised by sommelier Xavi Nolla.
The omakase menu costs 85 euros. Going à la carte, approximately, too. Because here the price does not mark the experience: confidence does. And that is perhaps the most beautiful thing about Jara Sushi Omakase. It asks something increasingly rare in Barcelona:that you relax, that you trust and that you let yourself be enchanted.